now. live from new york, this is "squawk box. >> good morning and welcome to "squawk box" on cnbc it is september 11th the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on america it is a solemn remembrance that will be commemorated on the site of the attacks in new york, washington, d.c., and later in pennsylvania i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin a andrew has maximum sustained winds that have decreased. you have higher gusts coming through. right now irma is 60 miles north of tampa irma is expected to weaken to a tropical storm this morning and to a tropical depression by tomorrow afternoon. >> we have complete team

coverage of this storm we are in bonita springs and jackie deangelis out there and diana olick north in atlanta we want to start right now with carl good morning to you. >> reporter: good morning to you. as becky said, the storm is very much a force in northern florida, will be in georgia later. we're in southwest florida landfall was southwest of naples we're on a bridge overlooking one of the waterways the good news if you can call it that, the estimates of storm surge, 10 to 15 feet, didn't really happen. you have all of these condos, hotels, gated communities that don't look that much different from the pictures that we shot here yesterday of course, i'm going to give that a big calf fee at given we don't know the fate of tampa and tampa bay. when this was considered to be a doomsday scenario in miami beach, the impact there was very

real, when it was considered to be a direct hit, that was a high end real estate story. that picture remains true. a lot of these homes out here, mental heal multi-million dollar homes 42% of the naples population is over 65. if harvey was a petrochemical event, this is going to remain a consumer story, high end real estate story we're waiting for more information to see what comes out of tampa later today guys >> carl, you've been there for the last 24 hours. have most people evacuated at this point >> reporter: this is a dead zone we're lucky to have seen one car today. a lot of this was mandatory. a lot of people started out maybe on the east coast came best because they thought they would avoid the storm. got stuck here checked into hotels. hotels booked up late. the people we talked to, you had a lot of, as i said, retirees,

snow birds who got calls from their kids saying, mom, please leave the house and get into a hot hotel. so the homes are very barron i think we saw a flock of dazed pelicans as we made our way to this live shot later on as we get to sunrise they will come out and try to assess the damage. >> carl, is power out there? we hear 3.5 to 4 million people without power at this point. i assume that's one of the areas that's been hit hard. >> reporter: yeah. florida power and light, i mean, their estimates were almost exactly on latest estimate 3.4 million customers. that's customers not people. so that would represent about 6 million people that's a lot of people without power. fpl also said, beck, it would be one of the most complex restorations in at least florida history. a lot of these lines across alligator alley in the

everglades, south of marko island very difficult infrastructure to get to those bucket trucks that you're going to see later on today hopefully, they don't get out until the winds die down to 30 those workers don't want to be up in that wind and they have to wait for some water to recede. that will take a little bit of time the gusts here, i would say maybe 15, 20 so hopefully once day break comes some of the -- actually, as we were driving on this bridge i was driving the suv and then all of a sudden, boom, i heard this boom on the windshield and it was a downed power line that had sagged right at the height of our windshield. so we've got to be very careful. >> yeah, there will be trucks from everywhere, carl. it is amazing how people do mobilize i saw a tweet, someone took a picture of an l.a. fire department truck making its way into florida it is pretty amazing anyway, thank you. thanks to you. now let's head to the other coast of florida contessa brewer joins usnear

ft. lauderdale good morning, contessa. >> reporter: good morning, joe you know, you don't often hear about peemg digging out in florida, but that's exactly what they'll be doing around here, digging out from fallen trees. in hollywood beach we saw sand piled up a foot, foot and a half deep along the broad walk in the famed hollywood beach area from irma pushing all of that beach sand onto the section where the businesses had boarded up and left the damage is largely localized. storm surge flooding on low lying streets, but the tornadoes were the other story on this coast. not only did we get the powerful rain bands and wind from irma, we also got tornado touchdowns nearby looking south we know that there was a crane that collapsed in ft. lauderdale last night onto it self. no immediate sign of other damage and then in miami two crane collapses on buildings under construction on these high rises. no injuries reported there, but we did get reports of construction debris flying off a

high rise and narrowly missing people on the ground below as miami-dade's curfew lifts at 7:00, likely residents will be able to join officials in assessing the damage on miami beach, for instance, they're only allowing locals on. no outsiders will be allowed on. in the brickell area, the miami wall street, they had damage there. miami airport had damage from water going through there. there will be no service until tomorrow and then likely it will be very limited, just very few flights. back here live, the ft. lauderdale airport was the site of one of those tornado touchdowns likely they will be out there to assess the damage today. again, that airport remains closed until they can see what they're dealing with on the ground, joe. >> okay, contessa. could have been worse obviously

on the east coast. we're still in the middle of things up in georgia and the carolinas obviously. thank you. we appreciate that joining us, andrew boyarski. works closely with new york city emergency management office during superstorm sandy and hurricane irene. you have an entire state three or four days ago thinking it was east coast and then at the last minute it was west coast how do you possibly prepare for that >> it's definitely something that emergency managers especially in florida are used to dealing with, uncertainty these are some of the best people in the business at the same time, with that evacuating equivalent of about 5 million people is a daunting task in a very short order the initial reports were that this was going to be a larger storm than it was when it came on shore still substantial. category 4 dropping down to a 3 but very, very hard to move

people inland and to evacuate and shelter that population, especially elderly, people with disabilities, socially needy people a lot of people probably unwilling to evacuate on short notice. >> at this point, you know, we're still right in the middle of it. it probably doesn't pay to say we -- you know, that there were bullets dodged or that the worst case scenario didn't occur, but the worst case scenario did not occur, did it? a direct hit on miami would have been much worse. >> or the storm surge. >> or the storm surge even on the gulf coast. >> this is correct there was some storm surge certainly in that area when you look at, you know, collier county into lee county and then up into manatee, sarasota, tampa. but it could have been worse there's still going to need to be a major assessment of the damage that occurred there

what's i think more important at this point is the cleanup and the life safety mission. evacuating people that stayed in their homes, that hunkered down and that need care as you eluded to at the top of the hour, there's a very large elderly population, a lot of frail elderly. those needs are very acute i've actually lived in the southern florida area before, sarasota area, also on the east coast and i have worked with this population and it's a greater challenge for emergency staff and the human services side of things. >> it will still be some time before we can assess the damage, before we can find out how many people are in need at this point. >> this is true. it will take, you know, weeks. there will be a large canvassing operation door to door some of that will be civilian led, some of that will be managed, coordinated by emergency management staff and

senior people. in each of these counties and at the state level and federal level you have an emergency operations center that coordinates between local, county, federal as well as public/private partnerships. and nonprofit organizations like the red cross, salvation army. there will be major mobilization out there to assess the damage but also to go door to door, house by house, building to building to figure out where people are this is what happened after hurricane sandy. we had major effort. it was an outreach to the folks in the outer boroughs who were impacted i was part of that mission at that time. >> it seems like governor scott did an amazing job of trying to convince people to heed the warnings on this and to get out and that potentially could have saved a lot of lives >> absolutely.

you know, the primary mission prior to an event like this, what we call the single overriding communication objective is to communicate to people that there is a threat, to get out not to remain, you know, in harm's path, and i think they did a very, very good job of it. i think that, you know, looking at the communication and flood zones, i think there's -- they will certainly look at areas of improvement. a lot has been improved over the years including using social media to reach people, but certainly the call was made. it may have been short notice for certain people certainly on the west coast, but i think that, you know, certainly from the governor's office on down they did a very good job in communicating what was needed. >> so fema's obviously has its hands full, but at this point jose would make a huge difference if that were to turn into something but at this point you think it's

still manageable as far as resources go >> i think that there will be some strain but i think that it is probably still manageable based important what i've seen i 234ishly in the news that being said, people are waking up now and they're going to discover, you know, how much damage is there. we're going to be aided now with increasing technology, with using drones, satellite imagery and so we'll have a faster, improved area to map the areas and see the areas most impacted. then in terms of aggregating data, again, the emergency management staff in those areas and then there are those people outside of those zones who are assisting in assessing social media to combine this and get a greater situational awareness of what's going on in that area you know, there's the big story

and then there's the little story, right the bigger story is really assessing the aggregate. the little story is what's happening with each of the individuals? how are those needs being met? and that goes from the top down, from the federal level to the state to the counties. and this is an ongoing situation where the storm has now moved north into georgia, alabama, tennessee. not as threatening a storm it's a tropical storm. fema has to be aware of the broader picture and marshall resources and not to forget the virgin islands impacted severely. >> how do you gauge whether this is likely to be an active -- it's chaos theory trying to figure it out anyway we have governor bush, jeb bush on last week he dealt with eight hurricanes in 44 days, 2004, 2005 back to back pretty major events does that mean it's going to be another 2004 or 2005 or not

necessarily? >> i think lessons were learned by fema. i saw the work undertaken over the past couple of administrations at fema. certainly under the form jer ne administrator they put a lot of plans and operationallized that in terms of what the former neem -- >> weather wise whether we can say this is going to be an active season. i also wonder since this slowed down the winds depending on how low the pressure is. >> as far as the low pressure, this did not rank up there. >> sustained wind speeds it was supposedly -- not that the media would ever over play something, it was the biggest storm to ever hit. i wonder if that was true. i wonder if we'll look back and say at least as far as damage like andrew and other -- that's the third andrew but as far as andrew, camille,

some of these other events, it's not going to go down in history as nearly as devastating i wonder if it was really the largest hurricane ever to come down in the atlantic 100, 150 years. >> i think hurricane andrew was probably one of the most severe. >> that wiped out a lot -- >> that was a category 5 storm on the east coast. if you go back to the records and look at homestead, it was virtually wiped out. >> yeah. >> so to your point though about this hurricane, it's still early to say as far as the extent of the damage. >> right. >> i think it's -- it's -- it's difficult to say where it sort of ranks but we can say that -- >> stupid to try to do that. >> but we can say -- >> we do it in the media for some reason. >> we can say there will be significant damage. >> we knew that all along. >> hundreds of billions of dollars and the recovery effort will take weeks if not months

for many of the communities. hurricane charlie in 2004 took that fort myers area at least a couple of years to remember. there's beach replenishment rebuilding whole infrastructure. >> i worry when we compare them, both in the media and else are with, then you get the other narrative which is, well, actually, this isn't so bad. maybe you should stay in your home then there's lots of this back and forth that took place. it was almost politicized. the media wants to scare you to do, and it's a good thing. that does help people do things. >> u neyou needed them to leave >> i've been in the emergency management business for 15 years. heed the warnings. what's the worst that can happen you evacuate, spend a couple of

days away from the home. it's better not to go down with the home i read too many stories after hurricane sandy and i was involved with the deployment many people didn't have to perrish, they drowned in their homes. many people on bell harbor suffered through fire storms in those areas and i heard and saw the damage it was horrendous. people don't need to do that. >> as carl was mentioning, power lines down, all kinds of dangers that you can't see. >> right that's the thing that i think is important for folks out there as they wake up is to if you don't have tv working, listen to the radio. if that doesn't work, listen to somebody, you know, within your building, someone of authority and not go out unless it is safe you might think it's safe but, again, read many accounts of people going out for a walk with their dog, hitting some water, electric wire is there and

unfortunately get electrocuted this is the kind of thing. avoid the hazards. let the cleanup start. if you don't need to leave your home, wait until it's safe. let's get a check on the markets this morning we've been watching the futures and they have been indicated higher today if things continue at this rate dow futures up by 146 points up by fair value. s&p up by 14 nasdaq up by 49. all three of these major indices could wipe out their september deficits at the open if we continue at this pace. we'll keep an eye on it as we get closer to the opening bell again, major advances across the board. let's take a look at what's been happening in europe which is open this morning as well and also higher. right now the dax is up by over 1% so is the cac. the ftse is up by 2/3 of a percentage point you see big gains in italy and spain as well. oil prices, oil ended up by 19 cents last week to $47.48.

this morning a little bit higher with wti up at 47.72 the ten-year note, that yield was under considerable pressure and now it's a 2.087%. let's check out the dollar this morning it looks like the dollar is up slightly. also up against the yen. our next guest is a long time south florida resident. his hometown of ft. lauderdale taking a hit joining us is mark grant chief strategist at hilltop securities mark, i know you left ft. lauderdale you were camped out inland why don't you tell us a little bit about where you are and what you've been through this weekend so far. >> certainly it's normally, becky, about a 3 1/2 hour trip from ft. lauderdale to ocala, where i am mid state. it took eight hours to get here

with my three dogs on the side of the road it was on the turnpike where the rest areas are where they have food and fuel and so forth there were six, seven, 800 cars trying to get in and then there were cars all along the turnpike and it wasn't just our four-legged friends behind the cars taking care of business because nobody could get into the rest areas to do it. it was a pretty horrendous experience right now i don't have any power so i don't know exactly what anything is. gale force winds tremendous amount of rain and thank god the dogs and i are safe. >> we're so happy to hear that you are safe, that you took shelter. i imagine you are very glad that you evacuated despite how difficult it was. >> yes i have a house man that's been with me for 16 years he's actually in my house.

i have a full house generator, but where i am in ft. lauderdale, my house, there's no power in the whole neighborhood around it and i've been informed i can't even get to my house if i wanted to try to get there because the streets are four and five feet flooded on the way to my house so i'm stuck. >> you know, that's a good point to make, mark. we've been talking about how this was not the worst case scenario, but even not the worst case scenario can leave lots of damage, lots of destruction in its wake this is a situation that for many, many, many people this is going to be catastrophic. >> can i make a market comment >> please do. >> is that all right >> yeah. >> so i wrote out of the box, my commentary, you know, you get it goes to about 5,000 institutions in 48 countries but i can't send it out because there's no power. the comment that i made, and

this kind of slides into what joe was talking about in a way this storm was tremendously wide and going up into desalle where they do not have construction for any kind of storms, and i think we're going to see substantially more damage. obviously with harvey, the cost of harvey and now the cost of irma, i think there's going to be a market reaction which is that the federal government, the state governments, the municipalities are going to be under tremendous pressure because of the services that they've had to provide, and i think when they total up what these bills are going to be, i think the fed is going to stop meaning that i don't think the fed is going to call for anymore raised rates now having said that, i don't think they're going to say it's hurricanes or damage, i think they'll say it's, you know,

wages, inflation, every other which thing. i think that is going to stop talking and moving towards higher interest rates. if the damage is severe enough, we may even see the fed lower interest rates and the government can pay for all of these expenses of the hurricanes. >> that is an interesting scenar scenario we've already seen that this could be a huge impact to gdp. obviously it's far too soon to know what irma is going to add up to. it is significant in terms of what it means to our economy. >> becky, we begin to see the

federal government is pouring money into texas and florida to help with all of the relief efforts. the fed, by the way, should stop and say we're not going to be raising interest rates that just costs the country more money. if nothing else, they should say, okay, we're not going to raise interest rates anymore for the rest of the year until we see what these costs are and as i said, if they're much more dire than we think at this point, they may even lower interest rates to try to help the country, which is the right thing, in terms of the borrowing costs to pay for all the damage. >> wow as always, mark, incredibly sound analysis of what's happening in the markets, even under a situation like this. we just want to say thank you for joining us this morning. we're glad you're safe, and take care stay inside. >> yes, ma'am, i will. thank you, all of you, for your

concern. god bless. >> we appreciate it. >> take care, mark. coming up, tracking hurricane irma southern florida waking up to survey the damage this morning as the storm pushes north towards georgia. first as we head to a break, check out some of the reinsurance stocks today stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" right here on cnbc. you're lkioong at swiss re up 4% we'll tell you why that is in a moment kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin trusted advice for life. kevin, how's your mom? life well planned. see what a raymond james financial advisor can do for you. hit could be the next big thing i should totally get that domain name... get your great idea online too...

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build a better website - in under an hour. with gocentral from godaddy. welcome back to "squawk box. our top story today, hurricane irma here's the latest at this hour irma's been downgraded now to a category 1 as it heads north over florida maximum sustained winds have decreased now to just around 75 miles per hour and, of course, gusts are much higher than that. right now irma is about 60 miles north of tampa and is expected to weaken to a tropical storm

this morning and to a tropical depression by tomorrow afternoon. >> we have complete team coverage of this storm jackie deangelis is in west palm beach, diana olick is north in atlanta. we start with jackie this morning. jackie, it must have been a very long night >> reporter: good morning to you, becky a long night, indeed, for so many people in florida and also here in west palm beach where right now evacuees and residents are still under curfew the sheriff's office here saying everyone will stay put until authorities can get out to survey the damage, assess how safe the streets are at 7:45 there will be a conference call to provide further updates and then further measures will be taken throughout the day to get residents and evacuees back to their homes. remember, right now the focus, of course, was on human life and safety throughout the storm. now people are wondering about their property there is a place where your mind can wander after we saw wind

gusts and rain in the homamount and volumes that we did overnight. the second piece of this story, power. this is going to be part of the recovery story in palm beach county, more than half a million residents are without power. we can see pockets going under some street lamps lit. we can't tell if that's the grid coming back on or generators restoring power to certain areas. and, of course, finally palm beach's airport, the third most prominent actually in the country. about 200 flights run out of here every day, and everybody's wondering when access to that will be restored right now there is no word when the airport will be back up and running, but presumably people who have left town want to come back and there may be people here vacationing, tourists who want to leave, guys. >> now to diana who's in atlanta this morning, georgia, preparing for us, hurricane irma

good morning. >> reporter: good morning. this is the world's busiest airport by passenger volume. take a look, it's a monday morning in atlanta volume is incredibly light when we got here at 4:30 this morning, it was a lot heavier. people trying to get out before the storm hits weather is already deteriorating. it's not supposed to kick in until noon already 629 flights have been canceled that's 1/4 of the flights here second only to miami delta obviously the big hub here they're being hit hardest. while the storm will be a tropical storm by the time it gets here, atlanta doesn't see a lot of that. they have hunkered down. government offices are all closed today schools are all closed today as is atlanta area rapid transit. that came as a surprise to a lot of overnight workers here. >> reporter: so you just asked me -- >> i asked you was the train or buses running? no one told us anything about it. >> reporter: so how are you going to get home?

>> i'm not i'm going to be here all day. >> reporter: already we're seeing overnight workers sleeping in the airport because they have no way of getting back home after the night shift they don't know when rapid transit will start up again. of course, big businesses are centered here in atlanta coca-cola, home depot, ups the storm will come through here at noon today and we'll see what happens afterwards back to you guys. >> thank you, diana. we'll be coming back to you throughout the program and throughout the day. the food supply chain will be very important this week. joining us right now is george home on set, the president and ceo of food distributor performance food group we know you're in town for first investor day we want to talk to you about getting people restocked and what your contingency plans have been thus far. what's going on? >> well, most of the work you need to do ahead of time before the storm comes in

when the storm's there, you just bunker down and see what you're left with afterwards so what we do ahead of time is we get as much product in as we can get in generators, you don't have to concern yourself with the product going bad. >> last week you had food pouring in >> as much as we could get in, yes. >> and what's the plan in terms of how you think things are going to roll out this week? >> we're basically shut down today in each one of the distribution centers we have ten that are affected by this storm then once things kind of clear out you'll hear from customers first. they're looking for product. as each one gets a little bit easier to handle, we've been through many of them, you learn. technology is better so we know what roads are out you know, we have a service that does an ariel so you can change routing around quickly based on what roads are flooded or maybe there's a tree that's blocking a

road and you just get product out as quick as you can get it out to the customers because they're going to be busy >> how do you think about dealing with employees during this period? there was a number of companies that seemed to signal to some of their employees that they wanted them to be around. they didn't want them leaving because they thought they might need them and that created its own complications. >> you have to do safety, particularly when you're asking people to go out with a large piece of equipment and deliver safety's really important. we have the advantage of being able to get employees from other companies once things clear out. we've learned not to get too many because a lot of people want to volunteer, come in and help you definitely lose employees that -- you know, they leave and they can't get back. so that's one of the more difficult is you've got drivers out on routes sometimes that they're not used to in tougher conditions but we just make sure that we follow safety protocols?

>> what percentage of your business is in the affected areas? >> a little bit over 5% of our business was in the houston area nationally and just a little under 10% is in the state of florida. >> so when you try to assess what this might do, dare i say it, this is such a terrible thing to talk about it, the math and business of all of it. >> yeah. >> to your business, when you think of what's this going to mean to the bottom line, for example, this quarter, how do you project that out >> it's really a short-term impact like i said, we've been through this many, many times so obviously you're shut down. >> right. >> you go a few days with little to no business then when things open back up, the people that open first, thae that's why people are fairly frantic to get product the people that open first really get hit hard. you have the cabin fever element. some people have no power, they can't get food into their home.

>> having said that, your profits are up 17% year to date. what are your plans looking forward the rest of the year >> these things happen and they don't really have that much of an effect, it could on a quarter particularly with it being the last month of the quarter, but it's not real material and we feel real good where we are headed right now. >> we really appreciate you being here this morning. we wish you luck with the investor day i'm sorry that our conversation was probably not as positive given the stock performance and how well the company is doing this morning we appreciate the conversation. >> thank you. >> thank you appreciate it. when we come back, turning the lights back on and getting buneida back to siss we will talk to the ceo of generac right after this don't you mean dad kind of ruined our hawaii fund? i thud go to the thothpital. there goes the airfair. i don't think health insurance will cover all... of that. buth my fathe! without that cash from - aflac! - we might have to choose between hawaii or your face. hawaii! what?

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generac no stranger to power outages. chairman and ceo aaron jagdfeld. great to have you with us, this morning, ara morning, aaron your comments on harvey and irma, it's kind of interesting,

i guess, but not unprecedented. >> no. it's really been quite a one, two punch though i don't think we've seen two cat 4 hurricanes ever landing in the u.s. in one season so for us obviously we're -- you know, this is a big part of our business and we're paying very close attention to it. >> it might have happened back in '04 and '05 according to governor bush. rita came in i don't know, the names get confusing. it's been a while since a major hurricane hit on the atlantic coast. you've had -- does that dictate what happens to the fortunes of your company it's been 10 or 11 years or other events are just as important? power outages happen all the time obviously >> the large events -- the last major event was sandy, of course, in 2012. it's been five years since we've had any kind of what we would refer to as a major event. your point is well taken, joe.

the power grid in the u.s., this has been ongoing in the last 30 years, has weakened. it continues to weaken there's a lack of investment, long-term investment and transmission, distribution, power generation that continues to manifest in poor power quality for homeowners and business owners clearly having some kind of a backup power type of plan is critical and we've got products that -- for that purpose. >> aaron, do you see the same sort of human nature played out every time or were you getting calls as the storm was bearing down on florida for people, can you install a generator before -- you know, before the storm hits does that actually happen? >> reporte >> so people fall into two types of people, those that plan and those that pro crass city nate procrastinators which makes up the bulk of our population, they wait for, i think, some assurance that the storm is going to hit and with this event

we had a long time to watch this i mean, we had, you know, a week-long type of event to watch and so it was pretty -- you know, even though the track maybe varied a bit at the end, in the final analysis it's -- you know, it did hit florida and it did cause outages this morning. we're showing 5.2 million customers without power across the region you know, that's going to probably be 9, 10 million people in total yeah, we had people calling us all last week. we shipped a lot of product out through our channel partners to try and stage product ahead of the event, you know. unfortunately, most of that product was staininged ged on t coast and the shift in tract moved it to the west coast there's scrambling to get product in the hands of the parts of the country that need it most. >> in the notes it says your stock hit a high of $62.50 back in march of 2014 after one of the coldest winters in history is that accurate >> yeah. i think we touched 60, somewhere

in there didn't stay there for long you've seen the stock trade probably closer in the 30s and 40s, but more recently it's obviously come back up here with events of harvey and now irma and, you know, a little bit more active weather we've seen here over the last three or four quarters we have seen outages pick up again. it's interesting, outages come and go it's cyclical. we don't know really kind of the big weather cycles but it's definitely cyclical. >> what should you do as a -- if you were down there and irma was coming in, it was going to be huge should you leave your generator on or is that dangerous? >> well, it depends. if you have an automatic stand by generator, it's going to kick on automatically you can turn them off. we recommend that you leave them on if you have propane fuel, it will run as long as you have fuel for it. >> when you have fuel. >> what happens if a storm surge? >> that doesn't help, does it? >> obviously if it gets flooded like any electrical appliance, that's a bad thing.

>> okay. all right. i have one and it is great with your normal power outages, that's for sure. you're like -- people want to come over from the neighborhood. it's like, you know, you've got to release the hounds. get away from my house >> rather than open the door >> no. no they were the procrastinators he was just talking about get your own. >> no. >> let people in. >> we let people in. >> aaron, thank you. we appreciate it. coming up when we return, shark tank's kevin o'leary is going to join us here on the set. stay tuned, you're watching squoo "squawk box" right here on cnbc. the governor has declared a winter weather emergency...

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welcome back to ""squawk box."" kevin o'leary's newest project, he has a new app that uses fractional share ownerships to improve financial literacy across the income spectrum joining us now is kevin o'leary, chairman of o shares etf investments and co-host of cnbc's "shark tank." what is this explain to us what fractional share ownership means, and this is the first time the s.e.c. has allowed it >> it's a new platform, that's right, because think about this. if you are a millennial, you are 22 years old, you just graduated from college, you got a job. i find so amazing the lack of understanding of financial envee investing at that age. these are the smartest kids in the world. the competition to get into m.

i.t. is impossible yet, when i ask them what's your investment plans, no idea. blank faces. >> i don't think that's unusual at all, though >> it's not good, though, becky. >> you don't have parents that have invested or taught you any of these things, it doesn't come naturally. >> here's the problem. you love apple $160 a share you have 20. how do you buy even one share of apple? you can't until now. we allow you to set up an account, put in $50 a week, whatever you can afford, and buy fractional shares. you start to learn what diversification, about stock purchasing, about dividends, about reporting. what i find with millennials and everybody else, frankly, is when they have it on their cell phone, a mobile device that they can do instantaneously, it happens. they start investing >> this previously has never happened before. fractional share ownership >> right there's lots of fin tech, and i applaud it all, but robo advisors are just that it's a robot advising you. i want people to buy a stock and understand what they've done so when they're 20 they start to get diversification understanding. they build portfolios. you have 1,000 stocks on here.

100 atf's. you can build a globally diversified portfolio, only if you are investing $50. the average income in america is -- >> how much of this is about the technology of putting this together on a platform and the fractional share ownership, and how much is it about the l literacy piece when i go on the app, what happens? >> it lets you set up and links your bank or your savings or checking account to it you start making decisions like how much have i put every week aside? i'm encouraging people do do 10% if you can afford it if you are making $52,000, you are putting away -- if you do that now, 25 years from now, you're going to be in a great place, assuming the market is giving you 70% a year. >> with all the competition for robo-advisors and other financial apps, what do you have to do to get the word out on this i keep finding at least for me, i don't know, in my instagram feed, i'm constantly now seeing ads for all sorts of new apps and robo-advisors.

>> i stay pretty close to the fin-tech community our biggest problem is customer acquisition costs. there are thousands of products out there trying to explain why you should download it is the biggest challenge we've got, and so it's getting the word out there. i'm obviously a huge advocate for financial literacy i'm going to spend the next two years hitting pretty well every college and talking about this this will be part of the platform starting next week. >> what do you make towards this move called themed up etf's? we had a guest on last week with an etf called maga make america great again on a filter, effecttively, a screen from 150 companies that were -- that back effectively republican and gop causes or at least that was the message. then obviously there are all

sorts of green etf's, and is that how you think people should think about investing it >> well, i would applaud anything that pushes the art of creating indexes forward, and here's what i say about maga, make america great again it's amazing that you can take an investment philosophy that really came out of a manager and crystallize it into an index and then have no style drift and perp tut that's the plus. the negative is you have to prove to me as an investor why would a company that donates money to any political party have a better balance sheet, better business model, better cash flow, what does that have to do with anything? that's a decision each investor makes, and i'm not saying it's not a good platform, but think about 20 years ago, andrew spy, the most famous etf's, that's proof force it's market cap weighted index every stock, even the bad ones now you have sophisticated indexes. >> i don't know if you saw the report over the weekend. seth carmen of -- $30 billion fund he will start returning money to

investors. value-based investor who thinks perhaps there's not enough value based value oriented investments out there in this propped up world. >> warren buffett did it back in the 1970s. >> that's a personal opinion that's what makes the market the market i look tat every asset class every day. i'm having a hard time taking money out of stocks right now because as an asset class, particularly when you start to think about the fed not raising rates as a result of what's happened in the economy. i would say there's a 50-50 chance we will not get another rate hike this year. if that's the case, you're going to love small, mid-cap, and large cap stocks >> because of the storms and what they do to gop? >> why would they want to put any resistance into recovery, which is what a rate hike is >> the one and only kevin o'leary. thank you, sir good luck with it. bean stocks. go check it out. >> that's -- bean stock. i thought it was -- >> we should search for it on

the app store. >> it's going to light up, cinup >>omg , hurricane irma weakening. more on the storm and everything else when we return. [vo] quickbooks introduces jeanette

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breaking news, hurricane irma pushing into northern florida. we have reporters spread across the region the latest storm track is straight ahead some businesses without power. southern company ceo tom fanning joins us with an update on when the lights will come back on for millions plus, the federal government providing thousands of workers and supplies to the region >> just the power of this hurricane. i think the hard part is now beginning. we'll see what happens >> we talk federal disaster relief and the nation's budget with senator mark warner as the second hour of "squawk box"

begins right now good morning welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc we're live at the nasdaq market site take a look at the futures right now as we try to assess some of the damage in florida, but as that storm continues, the dow jones looks like it would open up higher, and we'll explain why in just about a second about 147 points higher. the nasdaq as well s&p 500 up about 15 points in large part because there's an expectation that the fed doesn't raise. is that the -- >> potentially >> that's one of the ideas >> kevin o'leary said this morning it would be difficult to raise rates given the impact of these two storms goldman sachs already estimating that hurricane harvey will take 1% off gdp

it is still early. too hard to know how much damage will be done in the wake of hurricane irma as well >> the headline on various financial web sites or futures call sharply higher as irma and north korea fears. mark grant's analysis was pretty interesting. we jumped to that point. >> that's one of the nuances >> it's bad news still definitely good news with rates. >> potentially >> how rates would go up because it's going 3.5%. >> hard to do 3.5% in a quarter where you get hit by two storms like this. >> you would think it would be easier >> in the aftermath. in the quarters to come after this in the quarters -- not for this quarter, though. for the quarters afterwards as you get the rebuilding >> start right away, where there will be a shortage of construction workers >> there will be, but as people pointed out when it comes to rebuilding homes, it takes a little longer for the insurance money to come through, for the government money to come through as well. in the meantime, we are following the latest developments on hurricane irma here's the latest at this hour

irma has been downgraded to a category one hurricane as it heads north over florida the storm is packing sustained winds of 85 miles an hour. there are gusts that are even stronger than that right now irma is about 25 miles northwest of tampa nearly five million homes and businesses across florida are without power. some 12,000 flights have been canceled because of the storm. we have team coverage all over the storm and the possible economic implications for the region diana is in atlanta, but we'll start with carl quintanilla, who is in bonita springs what can you tell us about where things stand right now >> well, beck, it's been -- seems like forever since we saw direct sunlight here bonita springs. that's what's happening. you mentioned the challenges for tampa, northern florida, and georgia today as we got these massive electrical outages in southern florida obviously, we're going to try to hear today whether or not the

state starts bringing in refined gasoli gasoline, trying to get gas into these gasoline stations. you will hear the word relief a lot this morning, and this is a good example as to why you see these boats behind me at these high-end condos and hotels and waterway homes those were put up on lifts upon the expectation that the storm surge would be 10 to 15 feet, as the national weather center had warned that obviously did not happen. with that lower storm surge, those boats -- we didn't think they were going to survive the night. they have. that could be the difference, guys, of tens of blz of dollailf dollars of potential damages take a look at the most expensive hurricanes there have been 31 landfall since 1965 the most expensive ones, katrina, sandy, ike, and wilma together harvey and irma will dwarf those, and the estimates are still early, but we've seen some numbers close to $300 billion. that's 50% of the combined cost

of all hurricane landfalls in the last 50 years. one finer point today, guys, credit suisse has a note out this is very much combined between houston and florida a high-end real estate story interestingly, they say after the last six storms since 2004, home builders were up only 7% in the next year and a half it was building materials that were up double digits in the following 18 months. we're going to watch all of that we're going to pay very close attention to tampa bay and see how the flooding is up there, but down here where landfall happened and the eye literally crossed right over us yesterday evening, people we expect are going to try to start getting back home and see what the damage is. >> that's what i wanted to ask

how quickly do you think people can get back given what you have seen out there >> i'm always afraid to predict stuff like that, but i would imagine the access to affected areas is going to be much better we had very little trouble getting to this bridge we're not that far from the ocean. this is where the surge, if it had showed up, this would have been a very dramatic picture, and it isn't i think people -- it's not like the basin of new orleans, andrew, where once you got to napoleon avenue, you literally couldn't go any further unless you had an air boat. we just had a police officer stop us here we thought he was going to kick us off the bridge. what he said was they've not declared bridges safe yet, so we're going to be obviously careful, but i just don't see the drama that we saw in katrina. >> talking about that, you mentioned expectations there was a lot of preparation in advance of this there were very heightened

expectations about what this might mean how would you compare the pre-hurricane setup that you saw here versus what you saw in katrina 12 years ago >> i think, as you probably know, becky, and was pointed out all weekend long, i mean, public officials here, the national weather service, the hurricane center, their rhetoric was elevated, right? it was not a joke. i think one of the tweets from nws was this is as real as it gets people responded to that even hard core hold-outs that might have otherwise hunkered down, as they say, and you saw a lot of that on coverage over the weekend, but i would say the lion's share of people, if they didn't leave the city, they at least left their house and checked into a hotel where they have backup generators, and that was the difference here. >> okay. carl, thank you for that reporting. we will be coming back to you very soon throughout this program and throughout the day in the meantime, we want to head

to atlanta where folks there preparing to fuel the effects of hurricane irma diana ohlick is in the airport there. >> in just the last 30 minutes, more than 100 additional flights have been canceled in and out of hear hartsfield airport this is the busiest airport by passenger volume in the world, and there is nobody here i have been through this airport several, several times at all times of the day, and i have never seen it like this. it brings the total to 798 flights canceled in and out of this airport that's more than one quarter of all flights, and they tell me they have actually closed down one of the taxiways to create a parking lot for planes that are going to be stuck here for a while. the storm hasn't exactly hit yet here the weather is deteriorating it should hit sometime around noon, but there are plenty of passengers here who have been waiting for days they fled florida. they came up here thinking they could maybe get out. both domestic and international, this was not the vacation they thought it would be.

>> we have vacation in florida, and, yeah, my daughter called me and said to me it's hurricane, you must go. >> on their word 24 hours. >> reporter: when do you expect to get out >> this evening our flight is coming i don't know if it can fly >> i was in miami for a few weeks and because of hurricane i'm leave miami to come here and take my flight here to get back to paris >> how long have you been waiting here >> two days. >> now, the government here in atlanta is not taking any chances. they've closed all government offices. they've closed schools for the day, and they've also closed down the entire atlanta area rapid transit system, which left a lot of workers here who are the overnight shift stranded we'll see when the storm comes

through 12:00 to 6:00 is expected to be the brunt of it, and then we'll see what happens. back to you, guys. >> diana, thank you. diana olick. for more on the storm's track let's go to david bigger he has more details on all of this david, good morning. >> good morning to you guys. we are watching obviously irma as it continues to weaken as it's crossing over the florida peninsula. here's what the cone is looking like over the next couple of hours. it looks like potentially as we head into the overnight hours tonight and into tomorrow this could weaken to become a tropical storm it might happen as early as this afternoon. now, you can actually see this orange circle that extends around the storm that's the extent of the tropical storm force winds this is all flowing counterclockwise that's still pushing a lot of water in against the east coast of florida, and into portions of georgia. i wanted to show you what we are going to be expecting over the next couple of hours with this it's going to shift from being a wind producer to a rain producer expecting to see a lot of rainfall out ahead of the system as it continues to weaken. you can see all the rain throughout portions of georgia when all is said and done, it would not be surprising if we

picked up five to seven inches of rain in places like atlanta, augusta, savannah as you work away from the coastline, you lose the coastal influence. you can't really pull up all that moisture from the atlantic anymore, and the rain total starts to taper off. that's why you are looking at more of one to two inches of rain throughout portions of nashville. we'll continue to monitor this as it continues to weaken. it looks like right now it's a category one storm 75-mile-per-hour winds that's just barely enough to be considered a hurricane that's the good news that it will continue to weaken. that's the latest. back to you. >> all right we will take that silver lining. david, thank you very much joining us right now on the squawk newsline is miami beach's mayor, phillip levine. mayor levine, thank you for joining us this morning. i know it's difficult times for you. first of all, can you tell us where you are calling from i thought i heard you were camped out in city hall over -- >> well, i was camped out in city hall. i slept in my office we had our command center at mount sinai, and right now i'm on ocean drive about to head out with some of our teams and look

at some assessments on the beach. >> we keep saying that the east coast missed the worst of this storm, but that is certainly selling things short based on the damage that we've already seen the videos coming in from miami beach. i know you are without power there. there was some pretty massive flooding in the financial district and other places. three cranes collapsed what do you know so far before you get out and really survey it all? >> well, i was running around yesterday. we were out last night we were driving around let me tell you what we have number one, we have trees all over the place all over the streets they came down we have power lines that are live we have a couple of gas leaks. overall miami beach seems to have done very well during this storm. we were very fortunate, very lucky. the pumps came through and

although they're not designed for a hurricane, they certainly, certainly helped yesterday >> the financial district, we've all seen some of the feet of water that was floodingin to storefronts and to areas has that recede the at this point? >> i understand it has it's not on miami beach. the overall assessment for us pretty much is that we've had some damage, but it's not catastrophic it's relatively minor. what we're doing, of course, is you can't have any of our residents come back today. we're going to clean up the city we have first responders we have cleanup crews descending all over miami beach right now to make sure the city is able to take back our residents. we expect to allow everyone back by tomorrow. >> i take it you are feeling bad good about evacuating miami beach, though? >> absolutely, 100%. this is a catastrophic it's a nuclear storm twice the size of andrew packed an incredible punch we saw what it did in the caribbean. the ability for us to get our residents and visitors out early or even before the mandatory evacuation proved crucial.

i think it was a heck of an exercise for everybody to have watched, and i think also more importantly, becky, is that we're learning now how important it is to build resiliency into your city, how important it is to be prepared for these types of storms because these are not becoming unusual they could become more of a normal fact of life going forward. >> how do you do that? how do you build resiliency, and what's specifically has miami beach done that you think helps so much along the way? >> we are along in a $500 million project. our name of the game for us is protecting our city against sea level rise we have been seeing rising tide and king tides during certain times of the month, certain times of the year where water even on sunny days was starting to get so high in the bay that it was backing up and flooding our streets. what we did is we began raising our roads, putting in massive pumps, raising our sea walls, changing our building code, and making sure that miami beach is leading the nation showing resiliency in how to deal with

sea level rise going forward clearly, this also helps when it comes to hurricanes as well. >> changing the building code how? making it so that you can't build in certain areas or making it that things have to be built up to hurricane strength >> really actually for us since hurricane andrew, the building codes have been dramatically increased state-wide in florida. what we've been doing in miami beach is allowing you and making you build higher off the ground, so if you start building higher, if your roads are higher, if the tide is higher, we're keeping pace with what's happening with mother nature. >> sure. mayor levine, thank you for your time this morning. i'm glad to hear that you are safe, and hopefully we can get another update from you once you continue these rounds. >> thank you very much >> thank you coming up, power outages across the southeast thanks to irma how long will the power be out we'll speak to southern company's ceo tom fanning after the break. then the president says the government will do everything it can to help the states hit by both harvey and irma former fema director michael

brown will join us to talk all about it stay tuned you're watching ""squawk box"" here on cnbc people don't invest in stocks and bonds. they don't invest in alternatives or municipal strategies. what people really invest in is what they hope to get out of life. but helping them get there means you can't approach investing from just one point of view. because it's only when you collaborate and cross-pollinate many points of view that something wonderful can happen. those people might just get what they want out of life. or they could get even more.

>> welcome back to "squawk box." the futures have been up all morning long now 137 points on the dow. on the s&p 13.5. nasdaq sharply higher. up -- indicated up over 44 points this morning. is it that simple that fears over irma and north korea ease over the weekend was what some of the headlines are saying. >> i don't know how we solve north korea. >> september 11th, too i don't know how we solve north korea. north korea might be about containment. i don't know if it's not a -- you see the latest people want to -- >> angela merkel was an advocate for an iran type deal, but we'll see. we have other headlines this morning as well. average gasoline prices have surged since hurricane that are have i disrupted the refineries in texas industry analyst shelby lundberg says prices have jumped. that is the biggest price hike recorded by the lundberg survey since 2011

also, a new survey says that nearly three-quarters of americans are willing to pay increased taxes of tolls to fix roads and other transportation infrastructure engineering firm hntb says that that number rises to 84% when the money is designated for specific projects and can only be used for those projects apple is set to unveil its newest iphone in an event that is set for tomorrow. some reports say that the new phone may be called iphone x rather than iphone 8, although there are some conflicting reports that say you're going to see several different ones an iphone 8, an 8s, and the iphone x >> huge leaps, by the way. probably the biggest leap ever out of apple ahead of one of these announcements over the weekend where you could actually see virtually all of the new features in the phone, what the new watch is going to be >> and the three new phones. >> each of them have some different things >> it's pretty cool. i have to say, i kind of want to go out and buy one i'm a buyer. i haven't even seen it, and i'm

a buyer. >> i was just thinking about raising more money by raising tolls. we have some big numbers you know what it does on the gwb. if you have two axles like a truck, it's $42 to go across, if you pay cash >> i have to say one things about the gw, even though they've raised the price, it has not had the impact you would think on traffic all of these congestion pricing models -- >> you have g to to go to the c. >> when people talk about doing congestion pricing, it has worked >> that's also because everything else has gotten more expensive. you have to get here one way or another. the train tickets have gone up the ferry tickets have gone up all of those things are rising you know, you shake things out it's one thing if have you a great transportation system versus a bridge that is very expensive. it's not the case.

>> 18-wheelers have four axles, right? that's $84 to go across that bridge >> they're carrying enough -- >> what's the price tag at which the congestion pricing starts to work >> you have to put in another tunnel that's what we're going to do. our coverage as you might expect under one of those, i guess, the -- our coverage of hurricane irma continues now with reaction from a major energy player in the south. join us now on the squawk newsline southern company ceo tom fanning, who also can talk about some of the conjecture we've seen, tom, about whether the fed is impacted by these back to back catastrophes and whether this is like a long time to wroe

raising rates. how is southern company and how are you dealing with irma? >> yeah, thanks, joe i actually chair the esec which has been on the show a number of times talking about cyber and physical security. it also carries with it the responsibility for storm restoration. at least coordinating it i have been in d.c. over the weekend working with our federal partners all of the affected utilities. in storm is as big or bigger than sandy we think -- we've been talking about six million to seven million outages. if i could update some of your numbers. i think you're very close to six million outages in florida i think you're about 5.9 right now. we expect more if this thing comes north into the southeast the other thing that is a real challenge since we've had harvey, we've pinned down a lot of resources in the gulf south region the supply chain to recover is

really pretty extreme. all 48 states lower continental united states, including canada, are involved in this effort. 50,000 to 60,000 people are involved in trying to restore activity, and one of the things i'll just say, quickly, restore maent capture the full sense of where we should. for the very hard impacted areas, you're in a rebuild area, and that goes to time of restoration. >> are you talking about beyond the keys >> absolutely beyond the keys in florida. this thing came in on southwest florida, and some of those polls are just on the ground in fact, when i think about fpl has lost something like 3.6 million customers, 74% of their load duke, which is kind of central north florida, 1.1 million customers, 64% of their customer base it's a big deal. people need to understand, this is going to take perhaps weeks,

not days in some areas >> what does that mean how does that stretch out? you are right, we haven't really considered how wide of an impact this could have in terms of electricity being out for so long >> that's right. you are going to see local areas that are just going to be so tough. in other words, when you have the picture of a restoration effort, a lot of times it's some damage to polls and wires on the ground and things like that. when you consider some of the affects of this one, the infrastructure is on the ground. what you are going to have to do is essentially rebuild it. also, because of the storm surge in some areas, you're going to have to replace some otherwise hardened infrastructure that exists and it's going to be a long process some areas, we're going to be up in three days. other areas, it could be a week or more. >> all right, tom. when you start thinking about that and wearing your advisor hat as well on this, i mean, you can think about the inconvenience for customers. you can think about some human suffering in some cases in this.

you can also think about what this means for productivity from all those businesses that have lost power what are we talking about in terms of the impact to the economy? >> yeah. in the local economy, you will certainly see a reduction in the near term, but actually a resurge ebs ence in the long-tem i have kind of been looking at this stuff in other words, home building will go up lumber activity goes up. the whole supply chain of restoring communities will actually increase following these storms in the near attorney generterm o he so a down turn. consumption way down obviously, the human plight of people being displaced is going to provide strains on local economies. >> would you at this point think that this causes the big fed, not the atlanta fed, but the big fed to not move as quickly on the next rate hike, tom? you think is there a rationale

for that >> well, the big fed should speak to the big fed, but i'll just say this. my experience with the fed is that they take a very long view, and when you think about the economic reaction to these kinds of storms, in the long run the fed will take a prudent conservative course, i'm sure, in responding to these things. i don't think they'll be swayed by near term things in the economy. >> good luck getting everyone back up to speed, tom. we appreciate it i'm glad you are doing a lot of preparing for this, and it seems like -- >> joe, let me give a plug real quick. the federal government has been fab plus dhs, fema. i was up there with those guys they've been great and working the progress sectors these guys have done a hell of a j job over the past week or so getting ready. >> thanks for calling in >> you bet still to come, the latest in hurricane irma's path, and the

federal government's response. senator mark warner will be our special guest. "squawk bo wl rhtacx"ilbeig bke but there is another way to live. ♪ a way that sees the only path to fulfillment- is through others. ♪ becareally want to be there, but you can't. at cognizant, we're helping today's leading media companies create more immersive ways to experience entertainment with new digital systems and technologies. get ready,

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good morning, everyone we are live from the narks market site in times square. among the stories that are front and center today, futures and global stocks are rallying this morning. there are a lot of factors that krb cit have been cited. it is still very early we have yet to assess a lot of irma's damage. also, that north korea didn't launch any missiles over the weekend. that tells you about how low our bar is the futures, check it out. dow futures up by 137 points right now. s&p futures up by 13 the nasdaq up by 44. in fact, if we continue at this pace, the futures could wipe out the september losses for the major averages tesla helping aid hurricane evacuation efforts over the weekend in a somewhat unusual way. the company pushed out an over the air software update that let

electric vehicles in florida go slightly farther than they normally would before requiring a recharge one problem facing the insurance industry a shortage of qualified inspectors texas and florida have a combined 340,000 license adjustors, but insurance companies have had to deploy adjustor from other parts of the country and many cannot yet get to affected areas to assess that damage >> did you appreciate what tesla did there? it was fascinating they have one -- they only installed one battery. it's a huge battery. they charge one price for certain customers. a bigger price if you want the full battery range or -- >> it's only a software that -- upgrade that makes the difference between the two >> right basically, they upcharge you you can buy the car for a cheaper price up front, and then you can add -- you can pay more later to get more battery usage. the battery is always there. >> they just allowed all of these customers the free upgrade. >> temporarily >> sent it out over the air, and they're going to rescind it later. >> there are a lot of people that say why is it that they're

selling you a car that they are purposely did. >> now they tell us. >> they're purposely holding back the technology. >> it's pretty interesting >> same thing if you buy a laptop, right? >> what's the percentages of the people that this help. it's a moot point. >> you have never bought a laptop where the laptop where they purposely cripple the laptop they cripple their own device, and then charge you more to uncripple it >> tesla drivers did a little better than other drivers in the hurricane? is that what we're -- >> they just needed to get -- if you radio trying to get out of dodge, which everyone is trying to get out of -- >> people driving a $150,000 model -- >> it does open the window on this entire thing. >> oh, yeah. we could let you go a little further if we -- i don't know if that's a great p.r. move or not where. >> look, they did the right thing. it was fascinating to understand that technology was something i didn't know about.

millions of homes and businesses impacted by hurricane irma contessa brewer joins us this morning live from diana beach. good morning >> good morning. you know, there's so many people who are eager to get back to their homes and see what kind of damage they're facing, and they're having to dodge debris on the roadways. this is a major thoroughfare there are downed trees along the way that people are having to drive around the casino beside me closed. it's been closed since friday. the -- i just talked to the engineer, and he says he is going in to assess the damage. we've been told that dania beach is gone. the sand blew right off of the beach, and the trees are all uprooted they're going out to assess the damage the sheriff's department is. this place, 911 food, is buzzing with activity this morning it stayed open through the storm and hasn't lost power. the owner has been at the cash register, it seems, like for days hey, how is it going

>> good. really good. >> tell me about business. >> off the hook. >> why is that >> i guess because there's not too many people open >> how did you manage to stay open through the storm >> we never lost power >> did you intend to stay open >> we've been here 40 years. if we can open, we'll open >> what was business like at the height of the storm? >> nuts. crazy. really busy. >> the one thing that he doesn't have here that everybody is coming in and coast guard faski coffee you have people driving with their pets in the back of the pickup trucks, coast guard, and -- no coffee to be had the urgent task on hand for officials and for residents here is torg back and assess the damage joe, becky, andrew >> all right thank you. thank you, contessa. wow. that's a deal on those smokes down there i don't think we're allowed to advertise to this day. anyway, contessa, thank you. look right behind you there. isn't this like $11 in new york

right now? >> the tacks >> taxes >> good thing. let's go back outside. >> let's go back outside thanks for that report let's get to jackie deangeles for more on the hurricane. she is in west palm beach. hi, jackie >> good morning to you, joe. it's hard to believe that less than 12 hours ago we were experiencing almost 80-mile-per-hour winds and torrential rain was coming down. a lot of damage was done, and as contessa mentioned, people are going to be encountering that as they head back to their residences take a look at you are on pool you can see some of the palm tree branches that flew in here. palm trees typically are meant to sway back and forth, and you can see some of them at 45 degree angles during the storm last night at the same time this pool was drained about 30% before the storm came, and as you could see, it's back up to normal swimming level last night when we were sitting in the lobby and the storm was at its worst, the crew heard a

loud crashing noise. this awning was propelled all the way over here. luckily, it didn't break the window and go into the lobby, but these are sort of some of the examples of the damage within the vicinity that i can give you these are going to be problems as this community tries to recover. power is also going to be an issue. you've got more than 500,000 residents right now in palm beach that don't have pouf u pow power and it could take weeks to restore. although the crews and the authorities have said they're going to do their best to get everything up and running. also, as contessa mentioned, the natural feeling right now is for residents and evacuees to want to get back to their property to see what kind of damage occurred there, but, remember, at the local level and the state level the authorities want to make sure that everybody is safe and secure before they head out into the roads. right now the sheriff has said the curfew is still in place here in palm beach county, which has been one of the more conservative ones. at 7:45 there's going to be a

conference call to assess the damage in the roads and to give us a little bit more of an update on whether or not people can start to come out of hotels, houses, structures, et cetera. guys, back to you. >> okay. thank you for that texas, florida, and others have been looking to the federal government for some much-needed aide joining us right now is senate intelligence committee egg vice chairman mark warner good morning >> good morning. pretty wild, these images. >> they are pretty wild. is there going to be a fight of any sort over how to fund the rescue efforts >> in the aftermath of harvey last week we took care of texas. i know woel tae'll take care of florida as well. these are big numbers. you have texas's governor saying we have -- we don't have estimates yet from irma, but it's going to be a big number. we'll have to do that, but hopefully some of the bipartisanship we saw last week won't be an abhoration, so -- >> you mentioned last week, was

that an abhoration there's been a lot of articles and a lot of pundits that have said maybe something has changed. have we turned a corner? >> listen, it would be great if it is a permanent turning of the corner we were a little surprised, but we'll take it, and clearly, it does set up another fight in december when we're looking at the funding for the whole government for the rest of the year when we have to try to deal with -- we hope actually the daca program even before that time there's still the whole question remember health care that was the first eight months. there's still enormous challenges we've got to -- >> do you think that's going to come back? >> i think we will be forced to come back at least in terms of the reimbursements to the insurance companies. that is getting renewed on a monthly basis by the administration we need to get that permanently fixed. what we also need to deal with, though, is the individual mandate, which in terms of increasing insurance rates, has actually had a bigger affect on most insurance companies and the uncertainty of whether the administration is going to

actually enforce that, that has as much effect, if not more on rates than the so-called -- >> what is going on or not going on behind the scenes on taxes right now? >> well, andrew, i wish i could say, joe and i were talking beforehand ae wul know we need tax reform, but to date the majority party has basically said they want to try to do it on their own. i'm on the finance committee i've spent a lot of years, more years in business than i have been in politics i think i got something to add to that debate so far there's been no outreach at all >> so nobody calls you >> nobody calls. >> officially and unofficially >> officially, unofficially, my phone -- everybody knows my number i'm not getting those calls. my hope is -- >> what would a bipartisan plan look like? >> a bipartisan plan would say -- the finance committee is it going to start this week on some hearings on tax reform. i wish we would have started those at the beginning of the year we all kind of know where the pieces are you have to deal with -- we have to deal with repatriation.

>> do you think heidi heidkamp appeared with the president. do you think she's getting phone calls? >> i think if there's one thing we've seen when either political party tries to do big things, only with one side of the aisle, you generally screw up we saw that perhaps with the democrats when we passed obama care, dodd frank, some of the other things you clearly saw it this year when the republicans tried to do health care only with one side of the aisle >> senator, you are privy to a lot of intelligence, and obviously the russia probe with mueller. last week lost -- we were preparing for a hurricane, but some of the things that came up were that some close associates of the president were going to be interviewed hope hicks, maybe reince priebus, were going to be

interviewed about the response to the don jr. meeting and whether the president dick taillighted that the way that struck me was here we are another three months have gone by, and i'm thinking he has subpoena power he has a lot that he can look at now. is that don jr. meeting still the smoking gun? >> let's say he did dictate -- >> collude >> let's say -- let's say he did say let's not -- let's say that it was about adoption. is that going to be -- i mean, is that enough right there for you to get that excited about the -- >> that's also not telling the truth. i would also want to -- >> hear me out >> that's a conclusion that's some kind of stretch to obstruction on a meeting that his son had about, you know, they say, look, i have some info is that it isn't there anything else coming i hope you got something good. >> why would the president dictate to his kid what he wanted to say? >> i don't know whether

that's -- >> the meeting started with a premise. we don't know. i've not talked to don trump jr. because i want to talk to everybody else in the room first. hear this. during august, here were three things that came out publicly that we didn't know before we heard about the efforts to create trump tower in moscow we heard about senior folks in the trump campaign trying to set up a series of meetings with putin. we heard about the president having a first draft of a reasons of firing comey that were clearly different than what the public reasons were. that was just what came out publicly i would like this to move along, but every week -- >> on the don jr. meeting there's -- i need a better smoking gun before i really start thinking -- >> there was a congressman that came out and said, look, tell us everything right now so we don't go -- >> away we've not had is everything come out. every week -- >> if you find out that, yes, he did dictate that let's minimize the -- >> that would be -- >> -- does that rise to obstruction of justice

>> that would be an important piece of information what i'm more interested in what did the russians, if they did -- what did they proffer in that meeting in terms of information? then we also -- what also came up last week was i remember back in the beginning of the year, i said, you know, i'm a social media front, it feels like there was a lot more activity from the russians in terms of using facebook and twitter than was initially reported facebook said, hey, you are cra crazy. that doesn't make any sense. we found out last week that was the case, and, frankly, the $100,000 plus of advertising is only the -- that's a small amount that was one troll it didn't deal with all of the other fake accounts that basically -- >> did you watch bannon last night? >> i did not you know, i had other things to do >> did you read the -- you didn't read the transcript >> i read parts of the transcript >> he says there's nothing to it he says it's just -- >> you would expect him to say that >> this would be done quicker if

there wasn't every week a new strand coming out. >> the music is playing, but i have to ask you. equifax, do you think there should be sh legislation >> for the last four years i've been trying to work on i single party data breach legislation. makes no sense that we have 49 different laws so there's not a standard, and clearly, it appears to me equifax did not have their game on in ermz it of security >> are they the -- >> this is renewed -- this may get us to a point where we do have legislation -- >> it's not a partisan issue everybody has a -- nobody ought to get an exemption from data breach notification. >> what kind of liability do you think they should have >> listen, i think we'll sort through that i'm concerned not only with what they did beforehand, but their initial site, what they set up afterwards, looked like it was a faulty site. >> it did. >> thanks, senator coming up, florida insurance says big losses from hurricane irma ear going to speak to an analyst and get an outlook for the sector "squawk box" returns after the break.

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florida homeowners and businesses will soon begin to survey the damage caused by hurricane irma among the biggest questions, how much will be covered by all the different types of insurance out there? joining us right now in the squawk newsline is randy, a managing director covering the life, property, casualty, and mortgage insurance sectors at fbr capital markets, and, randy, thanks for joining us today. >> yeah, hi, good morning. thanks >> i know it's still early let's talk about how some of these stocks have been trading many of those florida-centric insurance companies were under

pressure until just today thinking that things would be down they rosation on friday, but they are traded all over the place. is that right for those stocks to come back, given we didn't have the worst case scenario is. >> yeah. i think that that's right. we published an irma estimate of $10 billion to $30 billion those are very big numbers, but that's well off the worst case scenario the market was discounting last week. those moneyo-line stocks were dw since september 1st. reinsurers have been down 9% or 10% since then that's when irma came into focus. i expect a rally in property casualty names affected by irma to continue today. >> the $10 billion to $30 billion in losses that you are talking about, that is simply insured losses, but not all insured losses we were just talking about numbers of $100 billion or north of that. >> the loss that we estimate is for private insurance losses in florida and also in the

caribbean, which will be notable in this event. we are not estimating losses from the national flood program, which will be significant. the numbers that are higher than that, though, i think might be from last week you know, watching local news feeds and watching everything from the industry over the weekend and this morning, i think that those numbers will be lower. i think to kind of size it, this could be the same size as harvey it could be smaller. >> we have heard from many people who have talked about the insurance in florida in particular over the years who have said, look, the premiums were just too low. they weren't charging enough and that an event -- catastrophic event could put many of those companies at a risk. do you think there are any companies at risk here >> there's always risk in insurance. i think that those mono-line companies buy significant reinsurance so they spread the risk out i think an event that would really test those programs would need to be bigger than this. there was a point in time where

if irma was a direct hit on miami, a cat four or five, it would be that $100 billion loss. even though this was a large storm and it affected the whole state, and there will be a lot of losses and a lot of claims to adjust, i don't think that this event would be that kind of test that's why i think you'll continue to see a rally in those affected property casualty names. those florida focused names and the reinsurers broadly today >> thanks for your time. >> thank you >> when we return, millions in the path of hurricane irma will be turning to the federal government for aid and supplies. the storm moving north and headed for georgia at this point. former fema director michael lle r esconggut mi up at the top of the hour. rsuin, not reacting to market downturns. focused on what you love, not how your money will last through retirement. let us help you with those decisions, and get on with your life.

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makes it easy to tell you apart. that, and i am better looking. i heard that. when it's time to get organized for retirement, it's time to get voya. hurricane irma's trail of devastation. raging winds, heavy rained pummelling the state of florida. millions without power homes and businesses destroyed as the powerful storm moves north. >> now, georgia braces for the monster storm. the carolinas and virginia also preparing for the worst today. we are live on the ground as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now

live from the most powerful city in the world, new york, this is ""squawk box." >> incha has weakened to a tropical storm, but it still has wind gusts that are near hurricane force. at this point nearly six million electricity customers in florida have lost power. right now irma is about 60 miles north of tampa storm impacts can continue well after the center passes. cnbc has full coverage of humor irma reporters are all across the

region jackie deangeles and contessa brewer near -- diana olick is in atlanta. let's start with carl. good morning to you. >> hey, andrew this is the gulf at bonita springs. literally the multi-million dollar view that you would want if you were buying a mansion here on the waterways. as far as the governor's request for people to stay in, clearly not happening here people are beginning to make every their way back to the beach. you can see them past this volleyball net we've seen some dogs going for a walk people are beginning to make their way out here the fact that i could stand here, guys, is relatively good news we were expecting, as andrew said, surges of 10 to 15 feet. that would have been obviously above my head at this point.

who knows at what point the water crossed over here or whether this is rain or whether this was surge flooding some parking lots. >> the number of federal flood insurance premiums is down because the premiums, obviously, were very difficult to pay all the same florida property owners buy more federal flood insurance than any other state 1. 7 million policies covering $42 billion in assets. the winds kicking up here a little bit, guys the story is obviously going to be farther north in tampa and georgia, but people are definitely making their way back

here to check out the damage >> carl, you mentioned the insurance companies. we just talked to an insurance company analyst who said, look, it's much worse -- much less than the worst case scenario they've been participating for he was talking about $10 billion to $30 billion in private insured losses that he is expecting out of this number that's quite a bit smaller than people had been expecting even 24 hours ago >> i think one estimate i saw going into the weekend, beck, was irma costing $200 billion, and i saw a number this morning of 49. people are sort of taking shots in the dark right now, but if you are cutting your estimates of losses by three-quarters, that's one reason you're going to see some insurers rally at the open today >> we spoke with the mayor of miami beach a little earlier in the program too, and you have seen some of the devastating pictures that have come out of miami beach. you know that they're not allowing anybody back in at least for the next 4 hou24 hs or o

he soubded down right relieved despite the damage that has come in is that the sense that you get from the people that you have talked to on the ground there too? >> absolutely. what's remarkable is how do you square the sense of relief this morning with water that we saw in downtown miami in the financial district ripple over the weekend. those pictures were ridiculous you can only imagine what we would have been talking about today if that eye wall had gone straight in to south beach, miami beach. you don't even want to think about it we're happy in a sense for the residents here who are, i think, fair to say grateful to be dealing with the situation they are given rather than something else >> it's amazing and remarkable given the pictures that we've seen that you've been showing us too. thank you so much, and we'll check in in just a little later this morning meantime, let's get to jackie deangeles. she's in west palm beach on the east coast of florida. jackie >> good morning to you, becky.

even though the east coast didn't necessarily get what it thought it was going to from the storm, there still is some catastrophic damage. take a look at this tree 80-mile-an-hour winds pulled the roots of this tree out of the ground, got it into the driveway here of our hotel, and you can imagine that there are going to be more trees like this and power lines as well. >> you can see how widespread this is. we're talking about six million people right now that potentially may not have their power restored for weeks now, the local authorities are doing everything they can here in west palm beach there is a curfew in place

they don't want people heading out into the roads and being curious starting to get home while crews are out, a, assessing the damage, and, b, trying to work -- >> good morning. >> you look at the damage and the damage assessment. seems better than the worst -- than the worst case outcome that some have been talking about >> well, this is the thing you always face in a disaster. particularly with the hurricane. it starts out as a five and goes to a four, three, or two these estimates start to drop, but that's good news i would caution people not to get too excited about the fact that we're now hearing reports that the overall damage might have dropped from $140 million to $49 billion to maybe only $30

billion. the main concern that i have right now is that everyone who has evacuated and left these areas is very anxious to get back, and you usually have more deaths that are caused after the hurricane when people are trying to get back into their homes and power lines are down, infrastructure has been stride, or it has been weakened. you walk into a home, and it looks fine suddenly you realize that this wall is about to collapse because of the floodwaters i would caution people that while the damage estimates continue to drop a little bit, the danger hasn't gone away yet. snoo are we underestimating things >> i don't think we're

underestimating things it's just based on my experience, you think about -- i remember, for example, on this day 16 years ago i was on a c-135 being flown back to washington because of the attacks in lower manhattan as we were flying back, we were deploying urban search and rescue teams from both the pentagon and to ground zero. i can recall vividly on the airplane talking to air force one and thinking that, you know, the death toll might be tens of thousands and then it drops to 3,000. well, 3,000 or one death or 100 deaths, whatever it might be, those are still tragic for those particular families. i would encourage people just to recognize that things are better than they expected, but don't get so comfortable in the fact that things are better that you rush back in and you become a victim after the storm >> all right i want to ask you about something that happened in harvey that's caused a bit of controversy. i don't know if you followed

this there are three texas-based churches that said they were damaged by hurricane harvey. they are suing fema saying that they're not going to get disaster relief money. should they? >> yes i find this controversy fascinating, and i haven't quite got the chronology, the history correct yet. when we -- when i was the general counsel at fema back in 2001 and deputy director and director, we made a policy change so that we could provide damage relief to those churches if they had a secular purpose. if they had a school, for example, they were providing after school activities, that we deemed that that was appropriate to use taxpayer money for it i don't know whether there's been a policy change or there's something unusual about these churches, but, for one, i believe that if you are a catholic church or a methodist church or whatever it might be, that you are providing a secular service. you have a school that anybody can attend as long as they're paying the tuition that becomes a secular function.

i think the government has an appropriate response to help cover the damages at the same level that we would any other business or individual >> okay. michael, we appreciate your time and your perspective this morning. thank you. >> thanks. thank you. as we continue to keep an eye on irma, let's get a check on the markets as well if you haven't been watching this morning, the futures have been indicated sharply higher. we've been looking at the dow futures up about 150 points. above fair value through much of this morning right now up 141 s&p futures are up by about 13.5 nasdaq up by just over 45. a lot of reasons have been given. first of all, irma doesn't look nearly as bad as expected, although heeding the words of michael brown, be careful. it's still early we don't know a lot of the assessments, and we've also hear heard from southern company ceo talking about how, look, you could be looking at power out for weeks for many, many people there. we are now talking about six million customers that are already impacted by this again, damage might not be as bad as expected. hopefully human toll not nearly

what had been anticipated, but we'll continue to see it the other issues that have been cited, north korea, not having any flare-ups over the weekend people saying potentially the federal reserve mark grant pointed this out, may not raise rates as quickly because of the immediate impact of gdp. >> some other event over there where people were thinking there would be another -- >> right >> missile test. there had been some things lined up >> take a look at the energy tharkts this morning wti has been higher. it's about 22 cents to 4770, and the ten-year, where we've been watching the yield under tremendous pressure, this morning it looked like the yield was slightly higher than where it had closed on friday. right now it looks like the ten year is yielding 2 pot 069%. it's edging back >> coming up, irma now a tropical storm nbc's meteorologist david biggar is tracking irma what can you tell us right now >> it has weakened to a tropical storm with winds of 70 irnz many i'm going to have a little preview of why it's still

painckg a dangerous punch coming up when "squawk box" returns after the break. hey you've gotta see this. c'mon.

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. nbc meteorologist david biggar is back at cnbc headquarters he hack tracking tropical storm irma david, we can now safely say it is a tropical storm. it is a tropical storm, which is the good news. unfortunately, it is still packing quite a bit of winds >> you can see what this looks like you see why we've been kind of looking at this as almost big news because it is falling apart for the most part. cloud cover has had a lot of heavy rainfall pushing into portions of the south. let's show you kind of the

timing of the storm over the next couple of hours again, it is a 70-mile-per-hour wind that we're seeing of a sustained wind around the center we also are watching this really pick up in speed moving now 18 miles an hour. by the time we get into early tugs morning, it might still be just borderline tropical storm force winds, and then it's going to start to weaken and become what we call a tropical depression now, even though it is a tropical storm, it is still dangerous because of the storm surge it's producing we're seeing a lot of wind pushing water into the st. john's river, and that's going to lead to some surge rising around the jacksonville area even though it is a tropical storm and we hate to use the term downgrade, it's still producing a lot of wind and a lot of danger out there.

it looks like you're going to be upgrading your assessment that this was not nearly as bad as the forecasts were and what you were going to be dealing with. is that fair to say? >> i think as you guys have reported so approachly, you use the word downgrade rather than downgraded there is still damage throughout the state of florida, and if you go to the southwest coast of florida, naples and the fort myers area, we're getting calls and reports of significant

damage, and on a coastline significant flooding we are already on site for generators into a lot of facilities we more people entering the state each hour. right now building up our resources. we are looking forward to a quick recovery, but still, there's going to be a lot of inconvenience, and well encourage people to have patience, and upon returning to your homes and your businesses, make sure that you're bringing with you food and water to sustain you and your family for five to seven days because until that power is restored, you're not going to have these businesses locally up and running so you can replenish

your food and water supply >> initially you were -- it was going to be possible that the damage was more widespread than harvey, and because of that, you would actually have to redeploy in belfour assets to florida rather than harvey at this point does it look like it's going to be less than harvey, and does that change how you -- >> we -- as we've talked previously with you, we have already dispatched people to the islands and the caribbean and to st. thomas and puerto rico we did have some resources coming out of houston. very few because we have a capacity to handle both catastrophe situations concurrent concurrently we're able to pull from 41 other belfour offices, and additional people are entering the state every hour

>> what's the latest on jose is that on your gsh i hate to say on your radar, but is this something you are thinking about at this point? >> we are, and it looks and, again, as you guys have reported it looks like that storm is going to veer north in the atlantic every six, eight hours you get the updates. i think us along with a lot of other people, that it does veer out into the atlantic and subsides out there in the atlantic without a land fall >> you must have thought if this were a direct hit on miami, i mean, that -- you would have -- i don't know

what would the response have been from belfour if it had? >> if it was a direct hit on miami, we would have pull the lever on 2,500 to 3,500 people the red alert clients that we have in and around the area would would have been devastated we have still gotten a few calls in the miami area for flooding, and, again, we use the term downgraded, and you guys have said this repeatedly just because it's downgraded from what expectations might have been, doesn't mean that there's not a lot of damage. we have already, you know, witnessed roofs being torn off in the naples area, in the fort myers area, building completely flooded even in miami, you got first floors that are completely flooded out. electrical power gone. it's going to take time for facilities to recover. the use of the word downgraded doesn't mean there's not damage. i think it's important that people take heed and have

patience and let the authorities guide their way let the restoration contractors begin the process. again, we encourage people to go slow you've got an adjustment process. you've got insurance coverages that are different in florida than could be in texas you have to look at wind damage versus flood damage. there are differences in coverages. you need to consult people that are in the know. you really do. >> sheldon, thank you. we appreciate it sheldon yellen, thanks >> when we come back, georgia facing its first ever tropical storm warning. we have a live report from atlanta next stay tuned "squawk box" will be right back.

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>> irma has been downpour graded to a tropical storm, but it's left plenty of damage in its wake nearly six million are without power in florida this morning. forecasters are predicting the storm will be downgraded to a tropical depression sometime tomorrow cnbc has full coverage in the storm. contessa brewer is near the fort lauderdale airport, and diana olick is in atlanta, georgia, where residents are preparing for the effects of irma, which is in the future let's start with contessa. hello again, contessa. >> hi there, joe now we're at harbor town marina, which is in dania beach. there are multiple multi-million dollar yachts here the damage, though, minimal. there are a couple of tops ripped off, but the kamts that stayed on the boats, they are feeling grateful they didn't get

more damage. look at the size of this tree that has come down the wind damage is the real story in this part of south florida. up and down the avenues, up and down the neighborhoods you are seeing downed trees. that's going to be a real problem for all these neighbors who are anxious to get back and assess the damage. it's not just here, but, of course, in miami as well to our south, there is lots of damage downtown there was two cranes that collapsed there. another crane that collapsed in fort lauderdale. no injuries that we're hearing of in any of those collapses also in miami, the brickell neighborhood, or wall street of the south, as some people call it, have mashlg storm surge flooding we're heading there later to assess the damage of that flooding miami airport had significant flooding as well that was coming in through the jet bridges and through roofs leaking, but they have some five or six terminals now with significant damage they say they won't be able to open up until tomorrow, and then even then it will be very limited flights. back in fort lauderdale out here at the nearby airport, they say

they won't open until at least tomorrow either. they're remaining closed today so they can assess the danl. there was a reported tornado that touched down there. now that it's light outside and people can see the debris to get around it, there's going to be ate lot of people taking stock over what needs to be done >> okay. contessa, thank you. we appreciate that all those yacht guys were probably -- they were -- some of them stayed on board i guess you would do that. i guess you would do that. >> i wouldn't. >> you're not going to get flooded. >> get pushed through -- >> capsized. let's get a quick check on oj futures. they are down after the run-up in recent sessions you can see where the down -- actually down more than 3% now down 3.5%, giving back some of the recent spikes >> what really happens because we've tualked to an analyst that

said any time you get winds above 80 miles an hour, that can be devastating it will take some time before we can see the damage that took place in the orange groves as well right now let's get down to diana olick. she's at the atlanta international airport. diana, this is a first for atlanta to be having a warning like this. >> yeah. first, they had a hurricane back about 25 years ago hurricane opal this is the first tropical storm warning. in just the past hour since we spoke to you, another 100 flights canceled out of here i have to show you this amazing site this is monday morning at the world's busiest passenger airport. there's no one here. it's craze why i so far 888 flights canceled just today out of atlanta, and the storm hasn't really even hit yet. it should come in around noon, and then last until about 6:00 they're expecting more cancellations throughout the day. even closed one of the taxiways to create a parking lot for planes who get stuck here, and there are plenty of passengers

stuck here as well now, atlanta is, of course, a major corporate hub. we've checked in with some of the corporations here. novellus will close its headquarters at noon hopefully the homebuilder says employees can work from home home depot headquarters, though, open the command center going strong. they also just announced that they'll be adding another million dollars in hurricane relief after the first million that they started with harvey. that's bringing it to $2 million that home depot is donating to disaster relief. also, ups, the headquarters is open, but they are giving their employees the option to stay home if it's not safe out there. again, you know, with the government here shut down, schools are closed, rapid transit is closed down, which has stranded a lot of overnight workers, ut about the storm has not hit yet. weather getting worse, but we expect it to come in around noon becky. >> diana, thank you very much. diana olick, standing by in atlanta. >> insurers are bracing for a

catastrophic billing after irma. let's before in alyse greenspan from wells fargo with more on irma's hit to the insurance company. in the last 48 hours, what was the worst case scenario you envisioned and what's the actual case i know it's early, but in your view >> yes thank you. the storm was really interesting in that it switched paths very close to landfall on friday. you went from an expectation that the insurance industry could have saw about $125 billion of losses just from this event to now today we're looking at around $40 billion of losses. the fact that the storm veered towards the west coast of florida really cut the level of lossed by about one-third. still, here at $40 billion that's effectively two times the losses from hurricane harvey still a devastating blow to the insurance industry even thou though --

>> the way insurance stocks are off is because -- it's a little different than -- there's a lot of flood specific homeowners companies that remember formed over the last several years. they buy reinsurance very low attachment points the reinsurers would have seen a significant loss on the $25 billion event. the loss that falls for reinjuries is substantially less towards the end of last week, reinsurers were pricing in a worst case scenario. we saw a little bit of a pullback on friday after we saw the event be as bad, and now stocks will be tracing more today. >> just the state of the property casualty business, we know it was overcapitalized, and they said this that they can obviously -- unless it was much worse, they had a cushion on both of these events, right? how did it get so overcapitalized? was it because of the relative lack of hurricanes over the past 10, 11 years, or what was it

it was almost -- hundreds of bell yonz of dollars over capitalized, wasn't it >> that's correct. >> today we're estimating that harvey and irma combined will take out $60 billion you need about $40 million more to cause the industry to turn. >> what do you mean turn positive or negative >> turn means you would get positive, so companies could start charging higher prices >> so you need a bigger catastrophe for it to turn positive >> yeah. i mean, and the interesting thing is you always -- >> warped -- >> -- you always say bad things happen in threes we had harvey and irma, and jose is also growing out there, which obviously it's early to say whether that one will actually impact the u.s., but you need the next big one, another storm, to effectively cause pnc insurers to cause higher prices. >> why has it been in a down cycle for so long? because of the relative lack of

hurricanes >> because of the lack of losses hi prior to harvey, there wasn't a significant strong storm to hit the u.s. in almost a decade. >> right it was a record of 3,000 or 4,000 days never before >> yeah. losses drive pricing power without losses, there's the lack of, you you know, significant pricing power. >> will there come a time where you are covering property casualty flood insurers? is that coming >> yeah. it's interesting you know, so flood insurance -- >> they already do commercial, right? >> in commercial it's offered as a rider, and there are several limits associated with commercial coverages, but it is offered within the commercial insurance market within the homeowners market that goes to the federal government, there's always a possibility, however >> how about the answer to the federal program is insolvent, isn't it >> the federal program has obviously seen a significant loss from harvey, and that will probably determine if the

private market does come in in a more significant way, and that would obviously provide additional coverage opportunities, and so, you know, only time will tell in that front. although for the flood insurance in general, it's just a very little take-up rate across the country. people are just not buying that coverage even if they're in a flood-prone area, prices are really high if you are in a flood-prone area. that has an impact there as well >> thank you appreciate you coming in this morning. >> thank you cantor fitzgerald holding its annual september 11th charity day. the event has raise the more than $130 million since its inception after 9/11 mike san tolly is there today, and he joins us right now with a very special guest mike, good morning >> becky, good morning thank you very much. cantor fitzgerald's new york trading floor. the trading day. this is the 15th annual trading day. it's also underway in london right now i'm here with ceo howard lutnick we're going to talk about how we're going to see here today

and what is going to be achieved here today, and i know the mission of your relief efforts has broadened out over the years. >> we've got president clinton that's coming today. bob dinero, jake jillen hall keira knightley is walking around eli manning. tough night last night, of course, but he is still here doing the right thing for charity. we've got great celebrities helping our guys here. they've all -- all the people behind you have agreed to waive their pay, and every penny of business we do today we're going to give away to about 100 different charities and hurricane leaf >> hurricane relief. we're commemorating one disaster of 16 years ago, but also kind of watching this unfolding natural disaster down there. what's being directed in that direction? >> well, you know, we lost 658 people and my brother gary, so we tried to turn the toughest day into something beautiful on top of taking care of 100 charities, we're going to fly down 250 volunteers, and we're

going to adopt hopefully 5,000 to 10,000 families, depending how much money we can raise. the partners and i have committed $5 million we hope to raise another $5 million. we're going to give each family with elementary schools, $1,000 each we cover all expenses and give away 100% of everything we give. cantor relief.org, that's the organization, and we hope to just take care of a lot of families because we understand what a tough day feels like. we want to know that people know that we're there to help >> right in other words, when you have one of these devastating events happen, it's the relief of the communities and families affected that has been a lot of -- >> imagine how interesting that is for cantor fitzgerald who has had the worst of new york ever is flying down to houston, flying down to florida, and we're going to get in with our volunteers, people who are totally in our community to go help other people's community and say we understand how you feel, and we're here to help >> now, you guys are -- these guys are waiving their pay you're having the celebrities come in.

we had the knicks coach come in. get a $350 million treasury trade. >> there you go. >> we thought that the payrolls were high. that's actually pretty big on a phone call clients are contributing how else is money being raised >> what happens is people pay us commissioned,s, and we make trading profits. everything we make we donate to charity. last year we raised just you should $12 million we're hoping for a big day today. we need a little movement in the markets. volatility we've got clients. they call in i mean, we make it fun and exciting and hopefully we'll raise a bunch of money last year, as i said, between $11 billion and $12 billion. hopefully we'll get there this year as well >> thank you very much andrew, send it back to you. >> thank you for that. when we return, jim cramer joins us live from the new york stock exchange "squawk" returns in a moment

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>> we're approaching 6:46 here on the east coast. the time american airlines flight 11 struck the north tower

of the world trade center 16 years ago. the nation is going to hold a moment of silence in about 15 seconds. hard to believe it's been 16 years already on a day that all of us remember unfortunately, we remember, but we must always remember. let's listen in here [ bell tolling ]

[ "taps" playing ]

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exchange jim cramer joins us now and -- obviously, jim, september 11th, we remember, we remember well. something to keep in our thoughts of course, we've got a hurricane

still, at least a tropical storm, still, you know, still making its way up the eastern seaboard a lot of -- a lot of things that really don't have much to do with the markets to think about today. >> right man-made cataclysm and natural disaster very solemn down here, as it should be. i thought the report from cantor fitzgerald kind of gave you a -- a sense of renewal, but also obviously a sense of tragedy, and when it comes to the storm, it's interesting, because there have been a time when if we had a $40 billion storm, wow, that's really terrible, and the danger of it was -- and first responders' courage amazing. instead because we thought it would be bigger, it's a sigh of relief obviously, very tough time around the country but a lot of money freed up from the reinsurers, as we heard on your show, and i think that basically it's a positive, because it

wasn't so bad. >> i think you know, it's -- for people that are still trying to deal with what's happening, you don't even want to say that, but i think we do have to at least once again, you know -- the worst-case scenario didn't come to pass, but, you know, that doesn't help people that are still, you know, displaced and in houston and that are dealing with hats happwhat's happening florida, georgia, the carols and everything else. the market, for whatever reason, europe was pretty strong, jim. and here it's also going to be at least a, an opening that's pretty solid. >> yes and, look, north korea matters tremendously because when you have a crazy man with nuclear weapons, and he doesn't shoot something off, again it just is not as bad as we expected. hard to believe you can have such a rally with not as bad as we expected but on both fronts, whether the natural disasters or whether it be north korea, people obviously feel like it's

a good opportunity to do some buying if you're market down listed. >> jim, on a lighter note. i was watching, just before we go, because i know that you think about it pulling for the redskins it didn't happen. >> no. >> but probably, that was good for you. was that -- >> yeah. broke the curse. redskins had owned us for a while. cincinnati, just tough >> who said cincinnati did i bring up rutgers >> ah -- no. you're absolutely right. i mean, it's just not fair we won't mention's bengals again this year. >> please don't. >> i won't. >> please don't. >> and mixon whom i played, played more like nixon in '74 than mixon in -- 2017. >> all right i guess if you're from eastern michigan you are 0-38 against big ten teams and now you're

1-38 becky, thanks to our -- >> i'm going back to jim at the bengals. >> all right, jim. >> thank you, guys. >> see you at the top of the hour and tonight don't miss david taylor joining jim on "mad money" as we head to break, cue the countdown clock. big lineup delivering alpha including treasury secretary stephen mnuchin, jpmorgan ceo, jamie dimon and many, many more. live there starting at 6:00 a.m. eastern. actually starting at 5:45 promoing the show. >> there you go. >> on world wide exchange. we'll be right back. i count on my dell small business advisor

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prevagen. the name to remember. welcome back to "squawk box. a look at stocks to watch this morning. what's going on. shares rising in pre-market trading. the drugmaker named care shultz, new ceo after a seven-month search and mastercard upgraded from bri to neutral at guggenheim based in part on long-term revenue from the company the faster payment initiative letting businesses send payments such as refunds to customers

more quickly and design maker cadence designs systems. replacing staples. acquired by private equity firm, and check out shares of snap this morning in the red after a downgraded deutsche bank reduced imperative for advertisers to perform 1510, out of the gate ipo $17. gone up to i believe about $24 at one point and article over the weekend about just how instagram has taken influencers, more influencers now are leaving snap to go over to instagram, because you can do more of the stories and actually know how many people are actually getting your stuff. >> yeah. i haven't decided yet. >> as the influencer you are >> big time influencer whether to go to instagram or snap not a problem. tomorrow's delivering alpha. >> influencers there.

>> we'll be there, bright and early, and then have, should be interesting. mnuchin. >> yes, stephen mnuchin, treasury secretary talk to him about a lot of things especially what's happening to the tax plan of interest to all of us a quick look at futures sharply higher all morning long. see now, dow futures up by close to 150 points. that does it for us today. join us tomorrow right now it's time for "squawk on the street. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with david faber and jim cramer back at new york stock exchange. we're on the gulf coast. you can see direct sunlight first time in a couple days. even though irma is weakening making its way north, a lot of wind out of the west as we are on the dirty part of the storm big, tough recovery challenges this morning down here in southwest florida. namely, the